Many small businesses credit SEM for attracting new customers. Depending on the competition in your business, relying on unpaid, organic Web traffic via SEO may leave your business far back in the rankings. By paying for SEM, you have more control over the specific keywords that will promote you, as well as where you will appear on the search results page.
There were some great tips in this article. I notice that many people make the mistake of making too many distracting images in the header and the sidebar which can quickly turn people off content. I particularly dislike google ads anchored in the centre of a piece of text. I understand that people want to make a revenue for ads but there are right ways and wrong ways of going about this. The writing part of the content is the important part, why would you take a dump on it by pouring a load of conflicting media in the sides?
When diagnosing an issue, you need to think back to what was the last item that changed. It could be a code push that somehow removed analytics from your site, it could have been a change to content that has caused a decline in search traffic. Did you make a change to your advertising? Sudden declines (or increases) are often traceable back to the last modification (big or small) that was made. - Greg Kihlstrom, Yes& Agency
Social-If you have identified where your target spends their time online go there. One of my personal quotes is “Meet Your Clients on Their Terms, Where They Are”. Remember that you are in their space so act accordingly. If you jump on any social platform and sell, sell, sell you will not do well at all. Provide value, be personable and engage with others. It’s 80% give and 20% take on social.
Buying website traffic shouldn't be a replacement for SEO and other conventional methods of online marketing, but it can certainly give you that edge you need in the highly competitive online market. You can improve your Alexa ranking, time on site and lower bounce rate, but most importantly - it will drive potential clients and bring your website in front of your target audience long before you will see the first results of your conventional marketing strategies.

I really agree with you on these methods to drive traffic without search engines. But one thing I had to mention that this kind of traffic will not be as targeted as organic traffic is. Thus,the conversion rate will be lower. Anyways great post. These methods are very helpful for new bloggers as driving organic traffic will be very difficult for them.

Search engines crawl the Internet to find Web content and return it to update their massive databases. Savvy online marketers can craft their website content by tracking the most popular Internet search terms related to your business (with tools such as Google or Bing webmaster tools or Google Analytics), and ensuring their website contains those terms. Remember, it takes a few months for SEO to start kicking in, so the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll see results.
Like you I am a scientist and like you did in the past, I am currently working on translating great scientific literature into tips. In my case it’s child development research into play tips for parents. I can already see that the outcome of my experiment is going to be the same as yours. Great content but who cares. I hadn’t even thought about my key influences. I know some important ones, but don’t see how they would share my content. I thought I was writing content for my potential customers. Is your SEO that works course the same as the content that gets results course? Sorry if I sound a bit dim asking that question.
Like Quantcast, the Google Display Planner also features precise figures and information – although, once again, this website traffic checker only provides estimates. Access is free of charge and there are no additional fee-paying functions, letting you check as many websites as you want. The Google Display Planner provides all the important data you need to quickly analyze foreign websites.
A client once had a downward trend in organic traffic. We audited all the checklist items to figure out what the issue was and we were stumped. We then evaluated the search trends of their top backlinks and found that their highest authority backlink had the same drop. To fix our client site, we had to fix the referring site. External forces are sometimes just as important as internal factors. - Brett Farmiloe, Markitors
This information hits the mark. “If you want your content to go viral, write content that influencers in your niche will want to share.” I love the information about share triggers too. I’m wondering, though, if you could share your insights on how influencers manage to build such vast followings. At some point, they had to start without the support of other influencers. It would seem that they found a way to take their passion directly to a “ready” world. Excellent insights. Thanks for sharing.
Other nifty stats include search engine visibility, backlink counts, domain age, and top competitors. Also, remember that this tool is just an estimator so don’t take its website valuations at face value What's the Best Way to Calculate the Value of Your Website? What's the Best Way to Calculate the Value of Your Website? If you're running a website, you should know how much it's worth. Fortunately, it isn't too difficult to calculate. Read More .
Excellent post Brian. I think the point about writing content that appeals to influencers in spot on. Could you recommend some good, manual strategies through which I can spot influencers in boring niches *B2B* where influencers are not really talking much online? Is it a good idea to rely on newspaper articles to a feel for what a particular industry is talking about? Would love to hear your thoughts on that.
Extra perks of SimilarWeb include their Top Websites Ranking: in this category, you select an industry rather than a domain – like fitness, fashion, or electronics – as well as a country. SimilarWeb will then show you the most traffic-rich websites for your industry and country. In the free version, however, you only see the five most successful websites. Also, concrete numbers are only available in the paid version. However, the function is still useful for broadly assessing your competitors.

Web traffic is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a website. This necessarily does not include the traffic generated by bots. Since the mid-1990s, web traffic has been the largest portion of Internet traffic.[1] This is determined by the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are popular and if there are any apparent trends, such as one specific page being viewed mostly by people in a particular country. There are many ways to monitor this traffic and the gathered data is used to help structure sites, highlight security problems or indicate a potential lack of bandwidth.